Shane Helms, better known to the majority of fans as The Hurricane, has worked for some of the biggest wrestling companies of the last twenty years. From getting his break in the WCW’s cruiserweight division to working with ‘The Great One’ The Rock in the WWE. There’s no denying, Shane Helms has had an impressive career.
In this exclusive interview, Humza Hussain spoke to Shane Helms about his recent return at the Royal Rumble, his time in WCW, and his departure from TNA. Helms pulls no punches and gives his honest thoughts on various events throughout his career.
I'd like to go back to your feud with The Rock in 2003, following backstage segments in which the two of you bantered, a match took place on March 10, 2003, on Raw in which you defeated him with help from Steve Austin. This was the main event, given the outcome and the placing is this one of the highlights of your career, please tell us your memories...
That was just an example of two guys that were working together. I remember when he took out his phone and said “it’s nothing, he says he knows you”, that was actually my line. I gave him that line to say against me. That’s an example of two guys without egos, and we just wanted to have the best segment, and we didn’t care about who had the best line.
Also, sometimes you hear bitter, old school guy’s talk about how funny doesn’t make money. Go watch that feud. Because that drew a lot of interest, we were funny, and then when we had the match, we got serious. Funny in entertainment is a valuable tool.
In real life, you are a comic book fan. Was the idea of The Hurricane in 2001 your idea, for your own amusement or to perhaps distinguish yourself from the WWE roster at the time and the others who came into the company from WCW?
No, it wasn’t my idea. It was WWE creative’s idea. That time in the industry was probably the hardest time ever to get over. Period. Because ECW’s gone, WCW’s gone. There’s just one company now, with a limited amount of TV time, and a limited amount of slots to get over. And you had the absolute titans of the industry. Rock’s there, Austin’s there, Undertaker, Kane, Triple H. Just the absolute cream of the wrestling crop.
To find a way to stand out in that period of time was a test for everybody, and most people failed that test. WWE liked my talents, and they wanted to do something with me, but they weren’t sure what. I think Brian Gerwitz always wanted to do a comic book character, and I was always walking around with comic book shirts on, I had the Green Lantern tattoo.
I never saw myself as a comedy act, and I never tried to be one. So I didn’t know if I could or couldn’t. Stephanie McMahon presented the idea to me, and I agreed to give it a shot. She told me they’d try it out for a couple weeks, few months at most. And that was in 2001 (laughs). Here I am, still The Hurricane all these years later.
You came into WWE as part of the company's cruiserweight division in the mid-2000's, some wrestlers we have interviewed who were apart of the division have said that the creative team treated them and the division as an afterthought. Did you ever feel this and ever get felt of personally as an afterthought?
Not me personally. I didn’t feel like I was treated as an afterthought. I think it’s easy to say that the company values the main title a lot more than it values the Cruiserweight title. WWE has always been a traditionally big man company, and they kind of always had trouble having that division by itself. They’ve done some great things with some little guys, but just as far as making that division by itself, they’ve kind of had some difficulty with that. But their overall business model is massively successful. So who’s to say whether they’re right or wrong.
In October 2005, you ditched The Hurricane gimmick and became cocky heel, Gregory Helms. What was the reasoning for ditching The Hurricane? Did you feel like it had run its course?
Yeah, I hit a wall. I knew what the limitations of the character were within the confines of the company. There was only so much they were going to do with a comedic character like that. Gregory Helms could have been a world champion, Hurricane; I doubt would have ever been able to be a world champion.
Also, I was so good at doing the comedy stuff; they forgot that I could actually wrestle. I know that for a fact because two or three week into my Gregory Helms run, Arn Anderson was surprised by how good I was because he forgot. Instead of doing the entertainment, I would go out there and actually wrestle. More of the ‘Sugar’ Shane style that I did, which was the very first thing that made me famous.
As great as I think comedy is in the world of entertainment, strangely enough, it’s one of the least respected. Even though it’s the most difficult thing to do because if you’re a wrestler and you have a bad wrestling match, there’s always tomorrow. If your job is to go out there and be funny and you bomb. People never forget that.
On January, 2006, you captured the WWE cruiserweight title and held it until February 18, 2007 making you the longest reigning WWE cruiserweight champion ever. How was the title reign for you?
It was the best in-ring work of my career, and I was the best heel in the business at the time. While things are happening, you don’t really analyze it like that. I’m just trying to go out there and do my best every time. Looking back on it, I knew what I was doing as a heel was working because I didn’t want people to cheer me. I didn’t want to be a heel selling merchandise because if they’re wearing your shirt, they do not hate you.
I made a ton of merchandise money as The Hurricane. I don’t think there was ever a bigger drop off in merchandise than going from The Hurricane to Gregory Helms. I went from great royalty cheques to terrible royalty cheques (laughs). I talked to Vince about that, and they took care of me on the pay-per-view end and stuff like that.
In May, you cracked two vertebrae in your neck and underwent surgery, and were out for 16 months. When you returned, you adopted the name Hurricane Helms for a different character which was not a success. You were demoted to lowly third brand ECW in 2009 and eventually released from your WWE contract in February 2010. What were your thoughts on this time and how much did the injury derail you?
The derailment was huge because they still had good things that they wanted to do with me. My neck, they could tell by the shading that my neck had been broken for four months before we found out that’s what it was. So it was pretty severe.
I came back as Hurricane Helms, wearing MMA shorts, and I was going to try and keep some of the trademark gimmicks of The Hurricane, but still wrestle like Gregory Helms. I kind of had an idea that when I came back I’d get the babyface pop, which I did. But I was trying to create something new, I was trying to evolve the character and combine Gregory Helms, ‘Sugar’ Shane, and The Hurricane into one thing.
But what happened was the Syfy channel that ECW moved to, they wanted the Hurricane character. So that’s why the whole fore mask and everything came back. But I didn’t think I was a good fit for that ECW show. I understood the Syfy aspect, but I was not happy there. I was never jaded towards the business, and even before I got released, I had already talked to Johnny Ace about taking time off because my contract was up in April anyway.
But because I got released, I ended up getting the extra ninety days of pay (laughs). So financially, it was a blessing for me to be released. I don’t know if many people could ever say that.
Before WWE, you worked for WCW for nearly two years before your contract was acquired by WWE in March 2001 when it purchased WCW. You were part of the 3 Count stable and as 'Sugar' Shane Helms, you went solo in 2000 and won the WCW cruiserweight title for the first time at Greed, WCW's last PPV on March 18, 2001. What were your thoughts on your time in WCW?
It was fine. You know, a lot of people look for some crazy gossip, but I really don’t have any. I don’t have any real bad stories. I was a new kid on the block, and I was getting my chance to shine. Within a short amount of time, I was able to break out from the 3 Count gimmick, and have the whole cruiserweight division centered around me towards the end.
Unfortunately, decisions beyond my control hurt the company, but it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if we could have kept rolling with that.
There are always people talking about how the top stars like Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan held people down. Did you ever experience anything like that?
No, not once. Me and Shannon worked with DDP and Kevin Nash, and the guys were great to work with. They loved all our ideas. Also, 3 Count was not a threat to anybody. So they didn’t have a reason to do anything negative towards us. Anybody that watched us could tell that we’re going to go out there and work hard and make whoever we’re in there with look great. Generally, anytime somebody got a chance to work with me, they knew I was going to make them look better than they could make me look.
WCW was a shambles at that time on and off screen for much of your tenure, and there was so much uncertainty about what would happen to WCW from October 2000 onwards. Manadlay Sports Entertainment was negotiating to buy WCW, and Fusient Media Ventures was announced as the buyer of the company in January 2001, before it withdrew and WWE stepped in. It must have been a torrid time.
It was, but there was nothing I could do to control it. I’m not in the meetings. I’m not in any of these decision making processes. The only thing I could control was my performance in the ring. So that’s the only thing I worried about. I tried to get my guys that I worked with to not worry about it.
I have always had a positive mindset, and it probably annoys people with how positive I am. To be successful in wrestling, you definitely have to take your career seriously. But I don’t take very many things in life that seriously. We’re all going to end up dead at some point (laughs).
Let’s talk about TNA; they recently went through a change in management again. Have you seen any of their recent shows, and do you have any thoughts on the direction that the company is going?
Some of the things they’re doing were ideas that I tried to help them facilitate before. Doing One Night Only’s with different companies. We were trying to get one with WildKat in New Orleans. We had talked about doing one with Omega. I tried to get them to embrace some of the cool stuff that was going on in the Indies, and they’re kind of doing a lot of that stuff now.
Their biggest problem is still production. They just don’t have the budget of WWE, and unfortunately, everybody compares everything to WWE. Especially if it’s on TV, if it’s on TV it gets compared to WWE. But the one problem they don’t have is talent. There are a lot of talented people in the business, and they just gotta find a way to use them properly.
You were with the company from 2015 until 2017. How was your run with them?
Yeah, the whole thing was really positive. I was really showing what I could do from an agent standpoint, and I was their best agent there. I know that in my heart. Most of the locker room does too. And the heel stuff that I was doing as Trevor Lee’s manager was an experiment that I knew would work and it did.
With that X-Division style, it’s so hard to boo any of those guys. So my idea was, let them boo me. They wanted me to do something, and I was just there as an agent. But they wanted me to do something and use my name to get more value out of it. So when we came up with the concept of me being Trevor Lee’s manager, that’s what I wanted to do. He’ll get the habitual boos that fans give because someone is the bad guy, but I’ll get the real heat.
Your parting message from the company was “I've never been an ass-kisser and I damn sure wasn't gonna start with an owl”. What did that mean can you tell us more?
Oh, yeah. When Jeff Jarrett brought his crew in, he just brought his buddies. He brought in guys with very minimal success in the industry, and he’s trying to replace guys that are successful and are proven commodities. He was only doing it because they were his buddies, and they were following him around like puppy dogs. It was embarrassing to even watch, to be honest with you.
When you’re working with a company, you need to be a team player, and I can be that. I’m not gonna follow you around and just say yes to every idea you got. I don’t think that’s a good creative environment.
A lot of people wanted Billy Corgan to take over, and they felt he would have been very good for the company. Did you agree with that?
I liked a lot of Billy’s ideas. He had a lot of good ideas, and there were some that I was not on board with, but Billy would talk to you about it. That’s the type of person that I want to work with, and at the end of the day, if it’s his baby, we’re gonna go with what he wants. And say what you want about Vince, but anytime I had a problem with what I was doing, I could go to Vince and talk to him. Sometimes it got changed and sometimes it didn’t, but he was always willing to talk to me.
That’s the type of people that I like. I can’t just go and kiss somebody’s ass.
In the past, superstars have returned at the Rumble to great reactions. This year, you joined that list. How was your experience in this year’s Rumble match?
It was great. You know, to pull off a surprise like that in the age of social media is really hard. We jumped through hoops. Me and my woman, we went through the airport, I’m in a disguise, and she’s in a wig. If wrestling fans see us, they know I’m in town for a reason. WWE flew us into a different town. Sent a limo to get us and we drove to the arena. They sent people out with umbrellas to shield us from onlookers, and people with cameras, and then we snuck on the bus. Me and Rey were on there, and we just hid out, nobody knew.
The pay-per-view was already underway before they brought us in the building. And then watching the boys pop, not only my friends but guys who maybe wanted to work with The Hurricane. It was cool.
Just the reaction from the fans was unreal, I couldn’t even hear my music, and that’s the first time that has ever happened. They played my music, and I had planned to do a little more on the ramp, as far as spinning around because I had a new cape. But when I couldn’t hear my music, I thought they cut it, and when they cut your music that generally means get your ass in the ring. But the reality was I couldn’t hear it because of how loud the fans were. I owe Philly a debt of gratitude.
The Ultimate Deletion recently main evented Raw. You were a part of Total Nonstop Deletion in Impact. Was filming one of those videos as unique as watching it on TV?
You know, the very first one, I was the agent. And as an agent, they wanted me to be on site. But I made a phone call to Matt, Matt kind of told me some of the ideas, and I just told them to do whatever they wanted to do. I just knew from what he was telling me, this was going to be like nothing we had ever seen.
As an agent, I’m there to kind of critic psychology. Psychology is out of the window on this, this is about chaos. So I didn’t even go. It’s really wild to see how far it’s progressed.
Did you see the one on Raw?
Oh, yeah. One of the things that made it stand out in TNA was that they didn’t have the high production cameras. It was kind of like the Blair Witch Project. I was worried that with the multimillion-dollar WWE production that it would kind of take away from the authenticity of it, but that didn’t end up being the case. So I was very pleased with it. It’s one of those things that you love or you hate. I’m one of the people that love it.
What are your plans for the future?
There are so many opportunities that have opened up since I left TNA. You know, 2017 was my most profitable year financially since I left WWE. And that was because I left TNA (laughs). I think I’m the only guy that gets fired and ends up smelling better because of it. Other than Jeff Jarrett, he’ll go into rehab and end up in the Hall of Fame. Credit to him for pulling that one off.
But 2018 has been on fire so far. Especially with the Rumble, that got everybody talking, and there were certainly companies out there that for whatever reason didn’t know that I was still working, but now they do. Within the next few months, I got deals to go Australia, South America, and Canada. So I’m still going all around the world. As long as people are interested in what I’m doing, I’ll keep doing it.
Originally published in April of 2018 for Total Wrestling Magazine
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